Iraq WMD Hunt Ended: NO WMD FOUND
Why did we fight this war?
Time to bring our troops home and hold those responsible accountable
by David Sadler
www.david-sadler.org
Original story found here
Published 2005.01.11
Last revision 2005.01.13
Photo credit unavailable
One of our guys who won't be coming home.
Codyl Wentz gave his life for what? His family will want to know.
The hunt for [WMD] in Iraq is over
"The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein.
"... Four months after Charles A. Duelfer, who led the weapons hunt in 2004, submitted an interim report to Congress that contradicted nearly every prewar assertion about Iraq made by top Bush administration officials, a senior intelligence official said the findings will stand as the ISG's (Iraq Survey Group) final conclusions and will be published this spring."
-- "Search for Banned Arms In Iraq Ended Last Month," Washington Post, 2005.01.12 --
Iraq provides the immediate justification
"The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
-- Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC) to advise Richard Cheney (now vice- president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff) among others. --
The American people will buy any official excuse
"For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on."
-- Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense, Vanity Fair interview, May 28, 2003, reported by USAToday in "Wolfowitz comments revive doubts over Iraq's WMD," on 5/30/2003 --
WMDs were the excuse...
"[British] claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were 'not the reason to go to war, but the excuse to go to war.'"
-- Sir John Walker, former British officer, Air Marshal, a former chief of Defence Intelligence, "Claims about WMD 'may have been excuse rather than reason for war,'" By Paul Waugh, Deputy Political Editor, 25 August 2003 --
The meaning of the word 'is' is ...
"We were not lying, . . .it was just a matter of emphasis."
-- "Reason for War?, White House Officials Say Privately the Sept. 11 Attacks Changed Everything", By John Cochran, ABCNews.com, 20030425, http://abcnews.go.com/sections/nightline/US/globalshow_030425.html [To build its case for war with Iraq, the Bush administration argued that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but some officials now privately acknowledge the White House had another reason for war — a global show of American power and democracy. Officials inside government and advisers outside told ABCNEWS the administration emphasized the danger of Saddam's weapons to gain the legal justification for war from the United Nations and to stress the danger at home to Americans.] (ed: comments by ABCNews.com) --
We know where they are...
"We know where they [Iraqi WMDs] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
-- Donald Rumsfeld, ABC Interview, March 30, 2003 --
Rumsfeld & NBC
"What's Rumsfeld doing on the Swiss-based ABB board selling nuclear plants to the North Koreans? And why was he laying the diplomatic ground work that would later lead to a transfer of WMD from the West to Hussein in the 1980s? Rumsfeld is an arms merchant, pure and simple. And what arms merchant wouldn't want to be Secretary of Defense?
-- David Sadler, 2003.05.01 --
Scott Ritter and many others told the world before the US invaded Iraq in 2003 that there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). This made sense in the context of events during and after the first Gulf War in 1991, prosecuted by the George H. W. Bush administration, and the information in the public domain concerning those events.
The first Gulf war of 1991, subsequent international sanctions and inspections did their job and that job was reported to have been successful -- rendering Iraq no threat to even its neighbors.
Many were aware of Iraq's disarmed status with regards to WMD before the second invasion in 2003. They knew the George W. Bush administration's claims of Iraq still having and making WMD were not factually correct. They knew the Bush administration's claim that Iraq posed an imminent WMD threat to its neighbors and the U.S. was a false pretext to convince the American people and the world community to back a new invasion of Iraq for other officially undisclosed reasons not associatied with actual WMDs.
Time and events have proven the George W. Bush administration wrong and the doubters correct regarding Iraq's WMD capabilities after the 1991 Gulf War. (1)
It was never really about WMD in the first place. Those prosecuting the war and telling the nation it was about WMD were, at the same time, telling us in their journals, their speeches, their interviews, on their websites and in their published white papers -- and most importantly, by their actions and deeds that the war was about other matters not assoiciated with Iraq being a threat to its neighbors or to the United States.
The American people just didn't listen nor pay attention. When confronted with these conflicting positions, the American people and press have proven themselves unable to process these opposing messages coming from the same administration and war supporters.
For instance, critics of the invasion prior to the invasion held that the invasion was really about oil and security for Israel. This criticism was dismissed by the mainstream press and pundits as 'conspiracy theory.' The mainstream press and pundits could not bring themselves to report these conflicting messages prior to the invasion, because of the high war-fever pitch at the time, and because they simply could not process the fact that administration officials and supporters were selling two opposing messages to different audiences.
See these articles for some of these quotes:
2003.03.10 • Oil Wars: Part 1
2003.07.21 • Oil Wars: Part 2 - Occupation
2004.11.27 • A Quiet (election) War In the Ukraine
Here are some recent quotes along the same lines made during the American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE) annual policy forum in Washington, D.C., in early December 2004. Excerpts taken from "National Security to Lead Renewable Energy Deployment," Power Engineering Magazine, 22 December 2004. Article reprinted by Power Engineering with permission from RenewableEnergyAccess.com
"Some of the most poignant dialogue stressing the national security angle at the conference came from a panel with considerable experience in that realm. These speakers included R. James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence, Frank Gaffney and Bud McFarlane, former national security advisors to President Reagan, C. Boyden Gray, former White House Counsel to President G.H.W. Bush, and Adm. Dennis McGinn, USN (Ret.), former Deputy Chief of Naval Operations.All those warnings to not invade Iraq are so much water under the bridge. Now that all of America should know that none of the stated reasons we invaded Iraq are still standing as facts, where do we go from here? Our soldiers are dying. They are killing people and being killed for what purpose and for whose benefit?
"All were keen to focus in on Middle East regimes that assure our petroleum needs..."
-- RenewableEnergyAccess.com comments regarding the December 2004 ACORE conference. --
"We find ourselves dependent on [oil] imports from people who, by and large, are hostile to us. It makes (energy independence) a national security imperative ... Situations like this have given rise to wars in the past, that is not to be precluded here."
-- Frank Gaffney, former national security advisors to President Reagan speaking at the December 2004 ACORE conference --
"I fear we're going to be at war for decades, not years. It will last a long time and it will have a major ideological component ... but one major component of that war is oil."
-- R. James Woolsey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency during the Clinton Administration speaking at the December 2004 ACORE conference --
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U.S. dead in Iraq
Why did we ask our people to make this sacrifice?
Photo credit unavailable
Remains of Fallujah, Iraq after 'liberation'
Photo credit: Getty Images
Iraqi girl and her father being liberated from their city of Fallujah
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U.S. serviceman who will be forgotten once he can no longer pull the trigger
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Liberated Iraqis. Let's hope they were all bad.
Photo of Alilsmail Abbas by Faleh Kheiber - Reuters
What if this were your son?
Photo Mike Moore, The Mirror-UK
Collateral Damage. What if this were your daughter?
Time for Accountability
This administration must be held accountable for the monumental destruction of private property and the death wrought upon the people of Iraq, the destruction of the lives, careers and businesses of our armed service men and women, the damage done to our international relationships, and the incredible waste of our national treasury which could have been used to help solve our energy dependency problem thus leading to a more secure, stable and prosperous America.
This accountability should be as brutal and severe as the charges and threatened punishment facing a man who recently pointed a consumer laser beam at a commercial aircraft. It should be as brutal and severe as the sentences handed down for being charged with marijuana possession with intent to sell. It should be as brutal and severe as armed robbery or driving a car into a crowd on a busy sidewalk. (2, 3)
As for the President, it is time to begin the debate regarding impeachment. If we can impeach a President for having sex with an adult intern, we can impeach a President for an unjustified and illegal war that has taken the lives of so many and which was sold to the American people under false pretexts.
The Bush administration had plenty of warning. Before the invasion, the press was full of questions (which have now been vindicated) regarding the justifications given for going to war, and many former administration officials, military and intelligence officers questioned the ability to even accomplish the 'mission' in Iraq.
All these questions and doubts were soundly ignored by the George W. Bush administration that had already decided to go to war in Iraq. To borrow a phrase from an F.B.I. agent who wishes to jail a U.S. citizen for pointing a laser at a commercial jet, this reasoning and zeal to go to war in Iraq was, "foolhardy and negligent."
Until there is severe accountability to the principals who have designed, advocated and conducted this reckless and unjustified national sacrifice, there is no restraint or deterrent to help minimize whatever crimes and burdens future administrations, or this administration, might place in the years to come upon the American people, our national treasury and our international friends.
David Sadler
www.david-sadler.org
2005.01.17
David Sadler was the 2002 GOP congressional candidate for the 12th congressional district of Illinois. He won the primary 67% to 33% and lost the general election by essentially the same margin to the fourteen year incumbent in a district whose lines are drawn to protect the incumbent.
NOTES:
1) Search for Banned Arms In Iraq Ended Last Month
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post
2005.01.12
The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein.2) Man Charged Under Patriot Act for Laser
... Four months after Charles A. Duelfer, who led the weapons hunt in 2004, submitted an interim report to Congress that contradicted nearly every prewar assertion about Iraq made by top Bush administration officials, a senior intelligence official said the findings will stand as the ISG's final conclusions and will be published this spring.
President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials asserted before the U.S. invasion in March 2003 that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, had chemical and biological weapons, and maintained links to al Qaeda affiliates to whom it might give such weapons to use against the United States.
... "The September 30 report is really pretty much the picture," the intelligence official said.
"We've talked to so many people that someone would have said something. We received nothing that contradicts the picture we've put forward.
... Congress allotted hundreds of millions of dollars for the weapons hunt, and there has been no public accounting of the money. A spokesman for the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency said the entire budget and the expenditures would remain classified.
[full]
By WAYNE PARRY
AP
Jan 5, 2005
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) - ... Federal authorities ... used the Patriot Act to charge David Banach, 38, with interfering with the operator of a mass transportation vehicle and making false statements to the FBI. He is the first person arrested after a recent rash of reports around the nation of lasers being beamed at airplanes.3) Insanity - 55 Years In Prison For Selling Marijuana
If convicted, Banach could be sentenced to 25 years in prison and fined $500,000.
The FBI acknowledged the incident had no connection to terrorism but called Banach's actions "foolhardy and negligent."
[full]
By Rob Kampia
Executive Director
Marijuana Policy Project
12-31-2004
... Twenty-five-year-old Weldon Angelos ... was sentenced to 55 years in prison for selling marijuana to undercover police officers. As U.S. District Judge Paul Cassell pointed out at sentencing, that's more time than he would have received if he had hijacked an airplane (25 years), beaten someone to death in a fight (13 years), or raped a 10-year-old child (11 years).Revisions:
... The assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case justified putting Angelos -- a first-time offender and father of two -- behind bars for 55 years by saying that he was a "purveyor of poison" who got what he deserved. (The "poison" was marijuana, which has never killed anyone.)
[full]
2005.01.13: Distinguished between the Iraq war of George H.W. Bush and the Iraq war of George W. Bush. Added quotes from ACORE conference, Washington, D.C., December 2004. Clarified some paragraphs without changing original meanings. Added two images of children injured from the Iraq war of 2003.